• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, January 7, 2020

While many larger things are highlighted at CES, like the new mega-screen laser TVs and vehicles with advanced connectivity, sometimes it’s the little things that can have a larger impact on a connected future.

One example is the new food thermometer from Yummly, Whirlpool Corporation’s digital recipe and cooking platform.

To use the little device, a smart stove or any other smart appliance is not needed, just a smartphone.

At CES last year, Whirlpool showed some impressive innovations in kitchen appliances, like the digital display screen on an oven front.

This year, the company is not displaying at CES proper, which officially opens today, but did present at CES Unveiled, a media-only event that always runs a couple days ahead of CES as part of the Media Days.

The Yummly Smart Thermometer uses dual temperature sensors to simultaneously monitor food and oven temperatures.  Users can track their cooking remotely, as demonstrated for me by Andrew Grose, head of business development and operations at Yummly and Jennifer Tayebi from Whirlpool.

The smart thermometer, due to ship this year, can do lots of other sophisticated things, like connecting to a smart oven, allowing the oven to arrange cooking temperatures based on thermometer readings.

For now, since most people don’t have a smart oven, the smart thermometer can provide one of the key pieces of information when cooking: letting someone know that what is being cooked is done.

Sometimes, that’s all the smarts that’s needed.